1500 - 1600
1504 - Leonardo da Vinci produces wax cast of human ventricles1536 - Nicolo Massa describes the cerebrospinal fluid
1538 - Andreas Vesalius publishes Tabulae Anatomicae
1543 - Andreas Vesalius publishes On the Workings of the Human Body
1543 - Andreas Vesalius discusses the pineal gland and draws the corpus striatum
1549 - Jason Pratensis publishes De Cerebri Morbis, an early book devoted to neurological disease
1550 - Vesalius describes hydrocephalus
1550 - Bartolomeo Eustachio describes the brain origin of the optic nerves
1561 - Gabriele Falloppio publishes Observationes Anatomicae and describes some of the cranial nerves. Separate trochlear and abducens nerves identified
1562 - Bartolomeo Eustachio publishes The Examination of the Organ of Hearing
1564 - Giulio Cesare Aranzi coins the term hippocampus
1573 - Constanzo Varolio names the pons
1573 - Constanzo Varolio is first to cut brain starting at its base
1573 - Girolamo Mercuriali writes De nervis opticis to describe optic nerve anatomy
1583 - Felix Platter states that the lens only focuses light and that the retina is where images are formed
1583 - Georg Bartisch publishes Ophthalmodouleia: das ist Augendienst with drawings of the eye. 1586 - A. Piccolomini distinguishes between cortex and white matter
1587 - Guilio Cesare Aranzi describes ventricles and hippocampus. He also demonstrates that the retina has a reversed image
1590 - Zacharias Janssen invents the compound microscope
1596 - Sir Walter Raleigh mentions arrow poison in his book Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana
Leonardo Da Vinci
Andreas Vesalius
Image courtesy of the Blocker History of Medicine Collections, Moody Medical Library, Univ. Texas Med. Branch, Galveston